Maybe all us losers could choose to not let this get us too down, and instead decide to use this loss, and to dedicate ourselves to doing something concrete that over the next four years will make our communities, our country, and our world better. Just a little something. Regularly volunteer in a local homeless shelter, become part of a community outreach program to Muslims or refugees, volunteer in women's shelters, volunteer in group homes for developmentally disabled people - anything. Lots to choose from. Do something doable. Don't give in to the "Oh, what use is this goody-goody shit?" feeling. It's of a little use - and that's better than no use. Make a small community garden with some friends, invite your politically-different neighbors over for lunch on a regular basis, get disparate groups of people together for events like outdoor concerts or frisbee barbecues ("Frisbee Barbecue" would actually make a great band name), start a shopping-for-old-people-who-need-a-little-help group. Do things that focus on bringing communities a little closer together. Eras of division like this one could use that. Let's spend the next four years winning - in spite of losing.

We could call ourselves "Losers For Winning Anyway Cuz Why the Piss Not?" (Maybe someone can improve on this. Just spitballing here.)

Let's all take this on the chin, shake it off, and say "Meh." We can do the world a good thing for four years.

I was trained six months ago or so to volunteer to teach English to recently arrived refugees in Sydney. Just one day a week, few hours of work. Our lives here got a little bumpy around that time, and I used that as an excuse to not do that somewhat challenging thing. Screw that. I'm back in. That's my start.

Important Note: All you winners are welcome to join in, too. With open arms.

Tuesday, October 11, 2016

Newsweek writer Kurt Eichenwald has a story up saying - well, a bunch of crazy shit. Primarily: that he has discovered a Russian news service story that carried a mistake regarding Eichenwald himself (Eichenwald is correct on this!); that the mistake proves that a Hillary Clinton campaign-related email that was recently published by Wikileaks was somehow falsified (wrong!); and that Donald Trump has apparently been fed falsified info related to that email—directly from Russia! (Whacky!)

Let's start slow:

Eichenwald's story is about a story that appeared this morning in the Russian news service Sputnik about an email from Hillary Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal to Clinton champaign chief John Podesta (the email actually says it's to "undisclosed recipients," but this if from the Wikileaks Podesta email dump), which was acquired by hackers, and recently published by Wikileaks. Sputnik's story - now deleted - appears to have incorrectly interpreted/understood/transcribed that email, and incorrectly put Eichenwald's words in Blumenthal's mouth.

Then came the money quote: '"Clinton was in charge of the State Department, and it failed to protect U.S. personnel at an American consulate in Libya. If the GOP wants to raise that as a talking point against her, it is legitimate," said Blumenthal, putting to rest the Democratic Party talking point that the investigation into Clinton's management of the State Department at the time of the attack was nothing more than a partisan witch hunt.'

Those words sounded really, really familiar. Really familiar. Like, so familiar they struck me as something I wrote. Because they were something I wrote.

The Russians were quoting two sentences from a 10,000 word piece I wrote for Newsweek, which Blumenthal had emailed to Podesta. There was no mistaking that Blumenthal was citing Newsweek—the magazine’s name and citations for photographs appeared throughout the attached article.

Remember: this is Eichenwald quoting the Sputnik story about the Wikileaks email, not the email itself. But Eichenwald conflates the two, and has used the apparent Sputnik mistake to strongly imply (bonus tweet) that the email released by Wikileaks was itself fabricated. That's wrong: here's the email. It doesn't put Eichenwald's words in Blumenthal's mouth, as the Sputnik story apparently did.

This was, if Eichenwald is to be trused on what the Sputnik story said (I believe him), Sputnik's mistake. It does not reflect on the email at all. (And please note that if the email published by Wikileaks was falsified, or simply made up, Podesta and Blumenthal could and presumably would deny writing or receiving it. They haven't.)

Eichenwald goes on to make a huge conspiracy of how Donald Trump came to get this story - he mentioned it in a speech just today - implying that he was fed it directly from Russia.

I am Sidney Blumenthal. At least, that is what Vladimir Putin—and, somehow, Donald Trump—seem to believe. And that should raise concerns not only about Moscow’s attempts to manipulate this election, but also how Trump came to push Russian disinformation to American voters.

[...]

This false story was only reported by the Russian controlled agency (a reference appeared in a Turkish publication, but it was nothing but a link to the Sputnik article). So how did Donald Trump end up advancing the same falsehood put out by Putin’s mouthpiece?

“This just came out a little while ago,’’ Trump said. “I have to tell you this.” And then he read the words from my article.

The logical, not hair-on-fire, not nutty conclusion about how Trump got that info: the same way other people got it - on Twitter, where it was spread around by tons of people. (Here's a tweet - on the actual email - from October 8. More here.)

Note: In case it's not clear, Eichenwald uses the fact that Trump "advanc[ed] the same falsehood" in the story as Sputnik as proof that Trump was fed the info from his best friend, Putin. And it's not even clear that Trump did that. (Elaborated more fully by Marcy Wheeler here.)

Update: Oof:

Re the Newsweek story, how do we know Trump was reading Sputnik story & not this viral tweet with thousands of RTs?https://t.co/Cq1lTj2PPO

Note, October 12 (Aus): Eichenwald has drastically edited and added to the article in question. It now acknowledges that the Wikileaks email was in fact not doctored. (It's still dumb and silly in every other way.)

Update, Oct. 20:Holy shit. (You've got to read it to believe it. It's so crazy and convoluted it's hard to make sense of. The gist: the writer of the Sputnik story, an American in D.C, says he got the bad info via a tweet. And: he contacted Eichenwald about that. The response: pure craziness. Plus: the writer lost his job at Sputnik. His personal story here.)

Monday, October 3, 2016

This is a crazy story: it came about because a British woman working for the Australian company heard the voice of an ex-boyfriend in one of the recordings:

The private conversations of thousands of Dutch citizens have ended up in the hands of the Australian technology company Appen which develops software for converting speech into text.

[...]

A report in the Dutch online site Volkskrant said telecommunications experts had opined that the only way this could have happened was by the British spy agency GCHQ tapping the information and then handing it over to Appen.

According to Volkskrant, the matter came to light through a Dutch woman who had been employed by Appen in the UK. The company has four main offices: in Sydney, Seattle, San Rafael (California) and Davao City (the Philippines).

This woman was tasked with describing thousands of short audio excerpts in which she heard Dutch people chatting on the phone, with many of them being communications by cabbies in The Hague.

In one excerpt, she recognised the voice of an ex-boyfriend, who was speaking via Vodafone. He had not given the telco permission to share his calls with anyone and confirmed this to Volkskrant.

Much more from the original story at the Dutch site Volkskrant - in English - here.

And a very interesting and related Twitter thread (to to tweet to see full thread):

Friday, September 9, 2016

Julian Assange and Wikileaks are getting shit from several quarters today for promoting an email from Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin to then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton—with a very questionable email address:

Here's a PDF of the email—not from Wikileaks, but right from the source: the State Department's FOIA reading room. (Type in "earpiece" in the search box to get to the specific email. There are three results - it's the third one. You can also view it directly at the Wikileaks website.) Abedin's email address reads "AbedinH@state.gov," just as you'd expect.

But highlight Abedin's email address in that PDF, copy it, and paste it - and this happens:

That's me - just copying and pasting that into this blog post, straight from the actual email record at the State Department's FOIA site. It's obviously just a reading error by the copy-and-paste machine (computer coding stuff that is above my computer coding knowledge).

Saturday, February 14, 2015

I've made a video showing a trick I came up with (although I'm very sure it's been done before) to remove a stubborn screwtop. Now you can share in the fun.

Because I didn't put a single thought into production - I grabbed C. as she was walking by and said, "Hey! Hold this phone and video this!" - let me spell it out:

• If you're having trouble removing a screwtop from some screwtopped thing—a bottle, jar, steam-cleaner canister, or whatever—get yourself a length of strong string. Thin, normal stringy-string will probably not work. A shoelace might do.

• Tie a loop in the string that will fit snugly over the screwtop, put said loop over the top, and wrap the string around the top a couple of times. (You don't have to make a loop, it just makes it a little easier. If you like, just wrap the string around the top several times.)

• Pull on the string - et voila - it should come off with a good strong pull that even a not-so-strong person could manage. (If you're doing this with a jar of pickles or somesuch, you're of course going to have to be careful about pickle juice flying around, so get your jar good and stable before pulling the string.)

Here's the video:

At the end of the video, the lovely and musical voice you hear is that of the lovely and musical C., saying, "This if for my clothes-steamer," meaning the canister. Just so you know.

Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Definition: A geographical feature of the common home, describing an area of floor behind the slanted back of a couch that does not get foot traffic due to said slanting couch back. The length of a specific couch's couch shadow is generally equal to the length of the specific couch; the depth of a couch's couch shadow can vary, and is determined by the degree of slant of a given couch's back.

Whether or not it is acceptable to leave footwear in a home's couch shadow (or shadows) is a subject of some debate.

About Me

I'm Thom Little a.k.a. Little Thom, writer and blogger for a bizarrely successful American non-fiction book series, and a wildly successful singer/songwriter (in my dreams). I live in Australia with Tin Tin.